Archiv für das Jahr 2009

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Together with Ralf Geschke (and Tobias Ratschiller), we created PHP-Center.de as a home for the German-speaking PHP community back in 1998. Back then, PHP-Center was also the host of the German speaking PHP mailing list (GML) which was founded by Ralf and PHP-Center was the complementary web site that contained news, articles, case studies and a job board for German speaking PHP enthusiasts. Some years later, the mailing list switched to phpbar.de and I continued with PHP-Center.de as a solo project.

I would like to thank a lot of people for their work in the last 12 years: Ralf Geschke, Tobias Ratschiller, Sebastian Bergmann, Christopher Kunz, Markus Wolff, Thiemo Mättig and countless others (especially those mailing list subscribers). You’ve made PHP-Center.de the No. 1 ressource for German PHP developers in the past decade and I hope Software & Support will continue the journey with its content.

I just came across several blog posts regarding the Oracle/Sun/MySQL war, including this one. There are a lot of interesting clarifications and opinions, but I want to highlight this comment from MySQL’s founder Monty about Mårten Mickos which is worth reading. One excerpt:

That could however explain why he [Mårten] is now so eager to help Oracle buy MySQL and even represented Oracle at the EC hearing.

MySQL’s former CEO representing Oracle in the EC hearing? Is it because Mårten converted to the dark side of the planet or is it because he believes MySQL will have a great future under Oracle’s umbrella? Or has it to do with stock options as Monty’s comment suggests?

UPDATE: Mårten clarifies in this comment that he participated in the EU hearing and represented only himself. Furthermore he says he has no financial or other ties to any of the companies represented there.

First of all, I want to link to a blog article written by the founder of MySQL to help MySQL being rescued – everybody can stand up and tell the European Commision why the Oracle/Sun deal threatens MySQL. Second, due to a personal request, I want to make clear that this posting reflects my personal opinion of the case.

Third, I have been thinking about the markets both database systems address and why MySQL really competes to Oracle in one way or another. There are several voices who claimed that MySQL is not a competitor to Oracle, but if you know „Project Peter“, Sun (the current owner of the trademark MySQL and its source code) targets Oracle customers in order to convince them migrating to MySQL.

For a long time, I have been watching the rise of MySQL (since 1994 or 1995, I don’t remember the exact date anymore). It’s not only because myself and our company works mainly with PHP (the scripting language of the Web) and uses mainly MySQL (the database for the Web, although other „database“ architectures like NoSQL become popular nowadays) … I remember back in 2000 when I was maintaining the PHP-Center (together with Ralf Geschke), Germany’s first portal where developers could find news, job listing, articles, case studies etc around PHP in German language. At this time, MySQL invited several luminaries and community members including myself to a meeting in Germany where we discussed the new German website and also the idea to create a subsidiary of MySQL AB for Germany (which was later known as the MySQL GmbH).

At this time, MySQL mainly targeted smaller and middle web applications, web sites like microsites for consumer goods, content management systems and the like. Back then, the so called „Enterprise Market“ wasn’t really a target as Oracle, DB2 and others were deep inside the Enterprise and had features MySQL couldn’t compete with.

But in the last decade, MySQL’s feature set grew continuously. It didn’t grow that much so that it could replace database systems like Oracle. And also, if you look today at the feature sets of MySQL and Oracle, there’s a clear difference between them although in some cases MySQL can compete in terms of database size, transaction handling, online backups and the like.

But something has changed in other areas in the last 10 years: the Web has been arriving into the Enterprise. Large customers thought about switching from terminal or desktop apps to web technologies like PHP, and this transition is going on until today and the future. The Web is everywhere – and with it there’s also a fair chance that there’s PHP and there’s MySQL.

Enterprises are looking for cheaper IT infrastructure. With web architecture, they do not only get scalable systems. They are also thinking if they really need an Oracle or DB2 for their systems – or if a PHP5/MySQL5 would suffice their needs. And I can’t believe that Oracle’s sales force would sell MySQL subscriptions into the Enterprise in these cases if Oracle would own MySQL.

Please don’t get me wrong: there are many areas where MySQL does not compete with an Oracle, but due to this transition to the web there are also many many situations where MySQL could become a great choice for an Enterprise customer.

And this is one of the reasons why MySQL must not be owned by Oracle – to give Enterprises a chance to make the transition to web architecture and cheaper infrastructure.

[…] on the theory that Oracle will not invest in the ongoing development of MySQL, which is something it has publicly committed to doing.

He links to an ad by Oracle. Come on, do you really believe in everything that is stated in an ad by a company who initiated a merger and wants to convince the customers of the company to acquire that the merger is a good thing?

What is the state of the art of PHP Architecture? Our CTO, Johann-Peter Hartmann, wants to know about it. Furthermore we want to know about the relevance of business goals during architecture creation. It would be great if you could help us filling out this survey, of course we’ll publish it later. Please answer questions based on real-world experience and not what you would like to see. :-)

According to the sources, Ellison is now willing to create a separate entity within a combined Oracle-Sun that houses Sun’s MySQL open database software business in order to get the deal completed before a hearing Thursday by the European Commission.

Looking how to develop a desktop application in a short term, I came accross "Titanium Developer". This Open-Source tool helps you to create desktop apps. The special feature about it is the possibility to use well-known Web-Technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and PHP. Thus, learning a new programming language is no longer necessary. Another advantage is that you can directly create binaries for Mac, Linux and Windows using the same code.

Today, we would like to present our modifications and updates concerning D2SBridge during the last weeks.

Plugin Functionality

We implemented a plugin system for D2SBridge. Now, you may change or enhance the base functionality by writing own plugins for D2SBridge. For example, we wrote a Plugin in a few lines attaching data submitted by the webform as an email instead of a note. Currently, we are thinking about additional hooks for the plugins in order to simplify and to enhance the capabilities of D2SBridge.

DimDim Plugin

We are also experimenting with a new plugin (consisting of two parts: D2SBridge and SugarCRM) which can be used to connect the drupal forms with a DimDim-Meeting. The workflow is very simple:
You create a webmeeting in SugarCRM (we wrote a new module for this purpose), enter the meeting details like start-time & date, and hit the save button. The entered data is used to schedule a meeting on DimDim. Every time you change the meeting details in SugarCRM, the changes will automatically be submitted to DimDim.
The meetings you entered in SugarCRM, may now be chosen via an autocomplete textfield in the drupal webform settings. If you relate a meeting to a webform, the lead/contact found or created by D2SBridge, will be related to the meeting in SugarCRM and will be invited to the meeting. You are able to open a new window and start the meeting in DimDim by just one click within SugarCRM.
This way you are able to see all leads/contacts in SugarCRM who have registered for a meeting.

There are also plans to integrate DimDim CSV meeting-reports in order to add a small note to each lead – if the person did actually participate in the meeting he registered for – but we will tell you more about that in the near future.

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